Universe
The Universe is a collaborative fiction (roleplaying) play-by-post environment that began its existence in October 2007 as one of several connected mini-games included in the Jedi Vs. Sith Facebook application developed by Urthworks, and is now, in it's incarnation as Universe 2.0, separate from the Jedi vs Sith Facebook Application from which it originated. First RPers on the Uni? The IF =History= JvS Universe (1.0) Main Article: Universe V1.0 As part of the JvS Facebook app, the Universe utilized the Facebook Wall Posting system to provide a message board for each planet and location it included. The planets themselves were divided into categories according to the region of space in which they could be found, based on Star Wars canonical sources - these being the Deep Core, Core, Inner Rim, Mid Rim, Outer Rim (East and West), Colonies, Expansion Region, Hutt Space, Empire Space, Unknown Regions, and a Misc. section that contained those locations that did not fit in the other categories (ie. Death Star, Zonama Sekot, Yuuzhan Vong Galaxy, etc.). While the notion of a Facebook-based play-by-post Star Wars Role Playing game was not a novel one, the Jedi Vs. Sith Universe role playing game gained a popularity that no other Facebook RPG game application had previously achieved, due largely to the popularity of Star Wars, and the several mini-games that the JvS Facebook application boasted - playing each of which contributed to your character's overall stats (Agility, Strength, Knowledge, Influence, Dexterity, Dog Fights). Even to this date, the JvS Facebook application still reports over twenty-thousand active users based on monthly averages. While the Universe section contains many similarities to an earlier Facebook play-by-post game, "The Infinite Empire," the JvS Universe was created to meet the demand for such a forum that arose among JvS players on the widely popular "Knowledge Board" - a single topic thread that accompanied the Knowledge section of the JvS Facebook app. On the Knowledge Board players often roleplayed their characters as they interacted with one another while answering trivia questions from the Knowledge section. As the traffic on the Knowledge Board became increasingly heavy, often with more than 50 to 100 people posting comments simultaneously, picking out single conversations became nearly impossible, and so it was decided that separate topics be made to accommodate the numbers of people posting on the application. Thus we saw the Genesis of the Universe minigame. The original organization of the Universe section, while closely resembling Infinite Empire, was actually the product of the imaginations of a small group of developers and beta-testers who designed the interface and tested its effectiveness before releasing it to the public. However, much controversy has arisen from the similarities at various points, and at some point, partial credit for the original rules was given to The Infinite Empire. With the release of the second installment of the JvS universe, this time off of the Facebook platform, the Facebook JvS Universe was locked and archived, then becoming known as Universe 1.0. Universe 1.5 *''Main Article: Universe 1.5'' Universe 1.5 is the current version of the Universe, and it was created as an external site as a phpBB forum, which officially opened on June 30, 2008. The move away from Facebook meant that is now not subject to as many loading errors as the previous instalment, as well as being more easily moderated and controlled. Moving away from the Facebook platform has, however, not been without its drawbacks. User numbers initially decreased, and many now see the Universe aspect of the JvS application as a completely separate entity from the Facebook JvS application. However, recently, member numbers have been gradually picking up again. Universe 2.0 Following the 1.5 crash late in January of 2013, JvS was moved to a Proboard page. Sounds like the Stock Market Crash of 1929... come to think of it the whole thing hit some of us that hard..... An Tiarna Dubh Category:JvS RP